To be and see like a pineapple

That means being united and having a collective vision, something that we as a nation need.

IF Sheikh Umar Bagharib Ali has his way, he will replace the papaya as our national fruit with the pineapple.

Sheikh Umar, you see, is the chairman of the Malaysian Pineapple Industry Board (LPNM) and he thinks this fruit deserves to be elevated as such. He cites many good reasons for it.

When celebrating International Pineapple Day on June 27, he told The Star that pineapples have lifted Malaysian smallholders out of poverty, provided employment opportunities, contributed greatly to the national economy and had a very productive cycle of “Grow Once, Harvest Three Times” with zero waste (“LPNM hopes to make pineapple a national fruit”; online at bit.ly/3SVdOxg).

To me, the cutest reason he cited was that the pineapple’s “eyes” reflects the unity and solidarity of all Malaysians.

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but perhaps he took a cue from the Thai proverb “have eyes like pineapples”, which means having collective eyes can help you see better than just one pair.

I could be reading too much into this as Sheikh Umar is asking for the pineapple to be declared “a” national fruit, not “the” national fruit.

While the papaya is cited as our national fruit on some online sites, the durian, for many Malaysians, deserves the title. Then again, should there be more than one national fruit when we only have one “winner” for other categories like animal, bird, flower and, more recently, tree?

This was a topic I delved into on Aug 26, 2015, in a column titled “Empower our symbols of unity” (online at bit.ly/star_symbols).

At that time, there were a lot of angry Malaysians who were frustrated and disillusioned by the divisive, toxic and racially- charged politicking that was going on. There was so much cynicism towards the government of the day that even flying the flag on one’s car or house was deemed by some as government propaganda.

Sheikh Umar’s pineapple efforts reminded me of that 2015 column because the fruit, like the papaya, is not native to Malaysia but is indigenous to South America.

For that matter, neither is our bunga raya, the Hibiscus rosa-sinensis. That’s why I asked in that column: Would a flower that originated from China – sinensis means “Chinese” – and is colloquially known as “China rose” have a ghost of a chance to be adopted as our national flower in our racially-bigoted political climate?

It’s a question that I think is still relevant nine years on.

Our first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, named the hibiscus the national flower because this immigrant red flower bloomed abundantly everywhere in the nation; I imagine he and the other founding fathers chose it because this hardy immigrant red flower represented the many Malayans who came as immigrants, took root and prospered on this soil.

We had that kind of inclusive leadership then, but do we have that today?

Today, we seem to have so- called leaders who gleefully fan the flames on any issue to show they are champions and protectors of their community’s interests, even if it is at the expense of national unity, common sense and plain decency.

Ironically, despite the widely-acknowledged racial polarisation that has been deepening for at least 20 years, the increasingly vitriolic hate speech, baseless accusations, factual distortions and outright lies and acts of violence, our National Unity Index (IPNas) shows the integration level among Malaysians is apparently strong and consistently improving every year.

In June, National Unity Ministry secretary-general Datuk Azman Mohd Yusof was reported as saying that there was a strong understanding and unity among the country’s diverse ethnic groups.

According to the IPNas Final Report 2022, which is available on the ministry’s website, the score recorded was 0.629 based on a scale measuring social cohesion ranging from 0.0 to 0.1 which falls into four categories: weak (0.0-0.24), low (0.25-0.49), moderate (0.50-0.74) and high (0.75-1.0).

At 0.629, we are moderately united, up from 0.567 in 2018. Based on its nationwide survey of 28,613 respondents, the report says our level of unity exceeds 60%.

I tried reading the report but found it rather confusing, with a lot of repetition, contradictions, gobbledygook, poor explanations of many terms and concepts, and careless punctuation.

Here’s an example which I have faithfully copied from page 68: “Overall, households with high income are found to show a high level of unity. Showing a high level of unity achievement. Since the level of income is often correlated to purchasing power and ownership ability, the higher a household income can show their ability to deal with trivial problems in society which ultimately shows a high level of unity.”

Unscramble that for me, please. Indeed, you can check out the report yourself here: bit.ly/unity_finalreport.

A finding that I found surprising was on page 65 of the report concerning “Achievement by State According to Religion”: “Overall, the unity achievement is high for all religious categories in Malaysia compared to the national level. These findings show that religion is not an issue that disrupts unity. Really?

Another statement in the report that struck me is on page 19: “Malaysia exists in a social reality of unity in diversity. The demographic of Malaysia is almost equal between the Bumiputra’s (sic) and the Non-Bumiputra’s, (sic) 50-50. Assimilation in this situation is not feasible as a basis for unity. The appropriate and chosen basis when independence was gained is integration. Hence, the implication is an ongoing process on attaining unity.”

This statement that bumiputras and non-bumiputras are almost equal in numbers surely contradicts what we have been told for the longest time.

According to the Statistics Department, Malays and other bumiputras make up 70.1% of the population as of May this year.

The report does point out weaknesses and issues that need to be addressed and that more can be done to improve the index rating, but I cannot help but wonder at the veracity of the report’s findings.

Still, I do believe we Malaysians get along very well for the most part, enjoying the benefits offered by a modern, diverse society.

Tensions are created when self-serving politicians harp on incidents to exacerbate racial and religious issues unnecessarily.

Because of that, I have also been poisoned in my thinking, which was why I was taken aback when an American YouTuber’s video showed three Malay secondary schoolboys at this year’s Thaipusam festivities at Kuala Lumpur’s Batu Caves as Red Crescent Society volunteers.

I had assumed that most Muslims would avoid other religious festivals, but I’d like to think that these three young Muslims, by being there, gained a better understanding of Hinduism, something that they would never have been exposed to in school.

Come to think of it, the pineapple would be a good national symbol indeed if Malaysians can be like pineapple eyes and collectively see and appreciate what a sweet gift of a nation we have.

To that, Selamat Hari Merdeka and Hari Malaysia!

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.